[imagesource:lifestuff.org]

A mother of three has been left struggling to walk or talk thanks to a brain injury caused by suspected drink spiking at a bar.

Simone White was out with friends at a bottomless brunch in Bristol when she started to feel “very funny” and collapsed, suffering from seizures. The 43-year-old was discharged and told the side effects would “wear off” but Simone has been left with stuttered speech and struggling to walk.

According to the CT scan, doctors believe Simone suffered a functional neurological disorder (FND), which describes a problem with how the brain receives and sends information to the rest of the body. With FND, the normal pathways your brain uses to move, feel, speak, walk, and/or think are disrupted. This promotes symptoms such as paralysis, episodes that resemble seizures, extra movements such as tremors or jerks, and problems with memory, etc.

Simone, a self-employed cleaner, from Bradley Stoke, South Gloucestershire, posted a heartfelt video urging others to “be safe so this does not happen to you”, per The Mirror:

“From my perspective this has been life-altering, your body is your body and no one has the right to decide what to do with it. I don’t want anyone to go through what I have gone through. There are really long term damaging effects to being spiked. I was so complacent. Who on earth would want to spike a 43-year-old? There needs to be more awareness of the potential. The neurologist believes I have something called FND. It’s something usually triggered by a stressful event.”

“I was very agitated. I had no control of my body at all. I was having episodes of consciousness and unconsciousness. When I was conscious I was gurning, throwing things, going rigid and scratching and clawing. They believe I was having seizures.”

Simone is now waiting for the results of her MRI to confirm the diagnosis and look at the next steps. In the meantime, she said her walking has improved but she is still a little unsteady and her gait has slightly altered. She says she still struggles with her speech and has spasms and ticks. She is currently unable to work, and doctors have told her not to drive.

The police said they are investigating this incident. However, the truth of the matter is that drink- and drug-spiking has reached “epidemic” levels in the UK and is now so common it can happen to anyone, with some saying they don’t report it as it will just be swept under the carpet. Per a terrifying read via The UK Times, titled ‘Inside Britain’s hidden drink-spiking epidemic’, police say testing is inadequate as MPs are deluged with reports from victims.

In 2022, a Home Affairs select committee was told that up to 15% of women and 7% of men have been spiked with alcohol or drugs, per The Guardian:

Hannah Stratton, a 51-year-old from Cornwall, told the committee that she was “violently ill” when her drink was drugged at a “quiet bar” in Newquay.

She also revealed that her two daughters had suffered the same fate, and told MPs: “Now the conversation seems to be not, ‘Has anybody been drugged this weekend?’ It’s, ‘Who has been drugged this weekend?’ It’s so commonplace.”

The committee also heard that when Stratton blogged about her experience, she said she was contacted by 100 people who said the same had happened to them.

Helena Conibear, the chief executive of the Alcohol Education Trust (AET), said its survey of 747 people found that 94 (12.6%) had been spiked, with a prevalence of 15% among females and 7% among males.

“Shockingly, only 8% of those who’d been spiked reported it to the police or to a medic,” she said.

Conibear told the committee that there needs to be more research into the driving factors behind this epidemic; “If one in 10 people are experiencing spiking, we really have to do something about it.” Apparently, in the UK, spiking is not considered a criminal offense.

Conibear said: “The reason why spiking is so prevalent is because the perpetrators know that there are no ramifications at the moment.”

Meanwhile, as Conibear agrees, the problem of spiking possibly remains the “most widespread criminal repeated act at this moment in time in this country”, even when it leaves mothers unable to carry out a normal life.

[source:mirror]